


Notes on the Disappearance of Derceto Class Frigate the HMS Johannes Agricola

by csoru



Category: Sunless Sea
Genre: Cannibalism, Crueltide, Descent into Madness, Epistolary, F/F, Horror
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-12-24
Updated: 2015-12-24
Packaged: 2018-05-07 17:08:21
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,234
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5464370
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/csoru/pseuds/csoru
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>These are not for you.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Notes on the Disappearance of Derceto Class Frigate the HMS Johannes Agricola

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Sath](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Sath/gifts).



> With enormous thanks to idrilka for proofreading. This story was written with Crueltide in mind, and as such features dark/disturbing/gross themes in line with what you’d expect from Lovecraft-tinged nautical exploration horror. Caveat lector.

**“Notes on the Disappearance of Derceto Class Frigate the HMS Johannes Agricola”**

Collated in the year of 1893 by A Scholar and Cryptophilologist Wholly Qualified and Distinguished Who Wishes to Preserve His or Her Anonymity, For Traitorous, Watchful Dangers Lurk in Our Very Bones and Marrow

Printed in accordance with regulations and good practice standards of the Ministry of Public Decency in the offices of the New London Gazetteer, 34 Doubt St.

To the best of the author’s scholarly ability, these notes present a factual and accurate account of events following the departure of the HMS Johannes Agricola from Wolfstack Docks (Pier II, cf. Harbourmaster’s log 31/21/FF/4) on the __th of ___, 189_.

These are not for you.

…

To:  
Mme A___ d’O___  
14 Fisherman’s Bones Rd

Mme d’O___,

It is with great sorrow and a heavy heart that I write to inform you of the untimely passing of your aunt, S___ d’O___, which took place on the eve of 24th January, 1893. The death occurreD resultant of circumstances which shall be detailed to you in forthcoming correspondence and the knowing of which has at this juncture been not deemed beneficial. As the executioner of the late Ms d’O___’s will, it befalls tO me to further inform you of the rights and obligations by which your person shall abide as the last living beneficiary named in the aforementioned will who has not, at aNy time, been dead.

Due to the nature as well as stature of items stipulated in Ms d’O___’s will to be given to you free of testament tax, I would like to extend a warm invitation to the offices of H___ & V___, whereupon the will’s execution shall be finalised.

On’ce more I would like to offer deepest condolences on behalf of myself and my parTners.

Kind regards,  
J___ McA___  
H___ & V___, Solicitors at Law

…

It was a weathered lacquered chest. The woman opened it by candlelight, having brought it to her squalid, stuffy rooms with the help of a dirty street urchin that demanded her handkerchief as payment for the service. The child had watched her with beady little eyes unlike those of a child at all.

She opened the chest. She lit candle after candle, and she read, unmindful of the wind picking up outside and staggering mournfully through alleys that grieved, still, the sun.

…

_Captain’s log, May 24th_

We set out on the windiest day of the year, it seems, but naturally wind is as relative as ‘day’, for it is my belief that it had simply been the odious vapours rising from the one Republican dreadnought moored at Wolfstack, which seemed to exude a miasma of illogic — or, indeed, ill logic — made physical and stifling. First officer v. displeased, in any case. Said crew will obsess over it as a bad omen until it consumes them, this folk nonsense, and from the depths of obsession real monsters will crawl. In all my years at sea I have not met a woman more wont to spin a tall tale. My hope is that a fortnight of cleaning latrines shall improve her morale.

I think of it, still, the dread.

The dreadnought, that is. It had swayed by the southernmost pier without a care in the world, and all around it the air had been thick with heat that scalded colours and noises off of passersby. I think of the dread and ask myself, in the safety of my cabin: what omens are there, what bad luck, to be glimpsed from a ship so removed from human understanding, so alien — the water, it had seemed, moaned in protest at the touch and slide of the red-hot wood against it, into

I forget myself.

It had been windy when we set out. The weather has much improved since then.

…

Dearest, most beloved Y___,

My sincerest apologies for the delay. Unforeseen circumstances arose; nothing concerning our business, no, but unpleasant stuff of a personal nature. An untimely death in the family. Quite nasty, constables on the trail, but I owe it to my mother to see it through.

Your cargo is, at the time of my writing, being delivered to the woman with the money. Have you seen her face? I have not. I hear she is beautiful, and ageless. Apparently, she is reluctant to make herself seen, and speaks only in a whisper. Whatever may be the case, her offer remains generous and the brandy shall be in good hands. If your new routes allow, and the Admiralty remains lacklustre in customs inspections, the Khanate might indeed make us quite rich, my darling.

I look forward to seeing you again. You are missed, always. Safe waters.

Yours in all things,  
A___

…

_Captain’s log, July 12th_

Palmerston’s Reach. I could hear the hideous whir of their mining machinery long before the first mate spotted lights. The port, and the mountain, are but a faint echo of the Republic and its violent shrieking red, and yet, for reasons unknown, Mt Palmerston evoked in the crew a disquiet subsumed only by the lights, o! the lights. Red, yes, very much so. But natural. Born of nature, not man, not worse. There is a safety in the comfort of a sure death, where nothing moves in the corner of one’s eye, nothing twitches, nothing jerks. It is only smoke and magma from deep beneath the bowels of the sea.

The fuel was cheap. Food, we still have. Should last another three weeks, cook said.

I wonder at the radiance of this place, for it is a heavy one, crushing. It brings no lightening for the soul.

I wonder at it. I turn it this way and that, alone in my cabin in the endless night of the sea.

Then I stop.

Last night, a black wind woke me.

…

 **Admiralty report 345/45/4/1893**  
**Date of submission** : REDACTED  
**Officer on duty** : REDACTED

 **Ship name** : HMS Johannes Agricola (Derceto Class Frigate, 4C class cargo load)  
**Captain name** : Salomea d’O___  
**1st Officer name** : REDACTED

 **Report body** *:  
CENSORED PENDING SECONDARY EVALUATION BY MINISTRY OF PUBLIC DECENCY. FOR FULL LIST OF LOST AT SEA PRESUMED DECEASED: SEE ADMIRALTY EMPLOYMENT RECORDS 34A/189_

_________________  
*Please use line guides. Report should be filled by highest ranking literate officer. All reports are subject to Ministry of Public Decency evaluation. All reports must be made in a timely manner after arrival in London. All reports must remain truthful, factual and accurate to the best of the officer’s ability. All reports must

_[Page torn]_

…

_Captain’s log, [unintelligible]_

The sea is a cruel lover. I remember, in moments of maudlin nostalgia, the violent heady rush of real translucent waters and sunlight, sunlight, precious scalding sunlight climbing over the horizon and spilling its blinding seeds and tendrils across shimmering depths. The light, o! the joy of it. But this sea, this crawling glutinous phantasm of silent waves plucked from every sailor’s screaming night terrors; it is not heady. It is heavy and bottomless. It is death, it is Styx spilled from its underworld penetralia.

We have not seen land in weeks, not even a rock. It matters not which direction we sail, for islands and reefs elude us. The sea sees all and it is cruel. Perhaps one follows the other. Geographical drift, said the tattooed navigator in his off-key voice, putting accents on the wrong syllables. I see the crew doing their d___dest to never stand too close to him, as if wary of catching his myriad unnamed diseases.

Rations running low, morale lower.

An enormous bound shark trails after the ship. I see its wild unseeing eyes emerging from beneath the black surface, the glint of our searchlights where they catch on its abominable cage, the creaking segments of it that have not yet yielded to rust and salt. Mostly the contraption has shrunk and melted into the shark’s slippery hard tissue. I dream of the macabre creature and then the black wi

I dream of the creature, of easing the sores and cracks in its skin. I dream of eating its mangled, abused flesh. I dream of eating its hate and its grief.

Two dead. Ate jellyfish. They hungered, and hunger makes even old sailors foolish. They paid for their foolishness with screams that had gone on for days, as electric poison burnt their innards. The sea consumed their agony gladly, and rippled with pleasure as we consigned their bodies to its pitiless depths. Poisoned meat, said cook. Spoiled.

Into the water they went. A waste.

…

The man poked and nudged at the slab of meat on his plate, wincing, now and again, when his fork sunk into the steaming moist flesh. He did not seem intent on eating his dinner. Judging by the shadows that filled the hollow, sagging skin stretched over his cheeks, he did not seem intent on eating at all. He had the too-wide, too-white gaze of a cornered dog.

The woman watched him with narrowed eyes. She had wondered, upon her arrival, whether the man would not have preferred to meet at a honey-den. Surely, a generous helping of the drug would help him dislodge the creaking stiffness of his spine? But, ‘No,’ he had only said: ‘I don’t sleep. The dreams, you know. Shameful business. Mirrors. You don’t trust them, do you? No. No, good.’

Presently the man began to speak: a defeated, droning monotone that brought to mind the steady and unyielding roar of seawater crashing into rocks. The man spoke without pause for a long time, unmindful of the patrons passing by, as well as the passage of time. A sliver of life came into his eyes as he spoke, words tumbling out rushed but animated. It was not a sane brightness that overcame him, but who, the woman wondered, was she to act as arbiter of sanity? He told her what he promised he would. Dates, names, ranks, the melodic buzz of his voice conjuring faraway vistas and easternmost islands unknown yet to the Admiralty, their riches and their horrors, and he did not touch the meat on the plate before him as if repulsed.

The woman listened. One of her hands, tucked neatly into the pocket of her gown, tightened around a crumpled letter. Her fingers were already smudged with ink.

…

_Captain’s log, October 7th_

The cannoneer brought a foul stray cat onboard, a creature of deplorable hygiene and manners. He presented the little monster with the wide grin of a happy maniac; I must find something for him to blow up lest he succumb to folly completely.

He said that it was for the rats, the cat. It looked at me with beady little eyes, as if in judgement, waiting for its pitiful thin throat to produce a hiss worthy of its instant dislike for me.

Rats? I run a clean ship, I said, and levelled him with a withering look. I said: we do not have rats.

It was the truth. We do not have rats any more. I still find little bits of skin and fur under my fingernails.

Only two nights — ha! nights! — later, I had been pacing the deck in search of the black wind, my ears pricked up for any whisper of it across the smooth obsidian surface of the sea. Not even false-stars were reflected in its limitless expanse of polished mirror, and I feared, for only a moment, that if I threw a rock into the water it would not even make a ripple. Perhaps we sailed across the edge of water, I thought; perhaps we now sailed over oil.

The cat passed me, and I caught a glimpse of it in one of the mirrors that line the hull, waiting to be turned to reflect and redirect mist or enemy searchlights. Just a glimpse: tail, stripes, flash of yellow eyes. And something else, something more: a sliver of bone and mangy fur hanging off rotting meat, empty eye sockets, black bile dripping from the toothless muzzle like spit.

It hissed, and dashed away.

The water did ripple when I emptied handful after handful of mirror shards into the sea. My hands became a bloody mess of injury and torn flesh, but I did not care.

I shall not be looking into mirrors again.

…

The woman sang to herself, a sad little girl’s song. Learning it, she had not known what all the words meant. She knew, now, having grown older.

She placed a rose on a grave overgrown with vines and poisonous mushrooms that spring from human remains. It was, naturally, not a real rose: a facsimile, skilfully cut out of red fabric wound tightly together, a layer of stiff lace to keep it facing upwards. It was supported by a wire covered with green thread. The woman laid the rose on cold, ungiving stone. Her mother loved to sing, until sickness had taken her voice and replaced it with a harrowing cough and the occasional spatter of viscous bile tinged with blood.

The woman has never seen a real, living rose. She has never met her mother’s sister, and a longing has sparked within her, for in her aunt’s journals the woman could taste the effortless music of her mother’s own voice. She wrapped her patched and worn coat around her shoulders. Her arms clutched at the lacquered chest, tightly, tightly: a little girl’s protective tenacity.

…

_ts13 yraunaJ ,gol s‘niatpaC_

The black wind wakes me every night. I startle, falling out of my bunk as often as not, but the windows are shut. The cabin is quiet, save for my breath, my blood coursing hotly, the depthless black sea caressing the ship, and the scratching in the walls that I hope is rats.

There is no wind.

I see the red petals of roses out of season, red as yearning, as if grown beneath the surface sun, red as nothing else but the promise of dreams from behind mirrors. There is no wind.

We moor at the threshold of dreams and barter secrets for goods, secrets for provisions, candlewax for meat, and we do not look West. I dream a full night’s dream: in it my niece, my only niece, is with me. She dances in a dress half frills, half whim, eating mouthfuls of petals and laughing at the vibrant red staining her teeth. There is no wind. I wake, and my cabin is empty, save for my rat companions. There is no w

The rats must be happy and fat from all the wood shavings they eat. Their meat must be supple.

What do rats see with their beady little eyes

_[Page torn — location??? Red roses poss. Irem???]_

…

The woman dreamt, in her squalid, stuffy rooms. She dreamt of the far eastern horizon and places she would never see with her own eyes, and places none ever would. She dreamt of the sun, but she has never seen the sun, and so the dream-born phantasm carried only a passing similarity to the surface sun of which London children were only told in hushed tones when they misbehaved: Eat your mushrooms, or else the Masters will take you to the surface and the sun will peel the flesh from your bones and grind them into black dust.

The woman dreamt of her lover. She dreamt of the lazy sprawl of her lover’s limbs, for the lover was wont to take all bed space as her right due, rigid and stiff-jointed from the damp disagreeability of ship bunks. Superstitious as all sailors, the lover would lay her thumbs across the woman’s eyelids, then kiss each in turn: for luck, and so that she could be sure nothing uninvited lurked behind the woman’s eyes. ‘You never know,’ she would say, reclining against the woman’s chest and winding locks of her hair around her fingers, ‘what d___able parasite from behind a mirror might get a foothold. You don’t trust mirrors, my darling, do you? No. No, good.’ Then, she would apologise, profusely, for her foul mouth. Then, she would speak no more and prove her mouth far more dextrous when used in a fashion one might venture to describe as foul.

The woman dreamt of her lover laying her open and leaving her unstrung, coaxing a song from beneath her skin and out of the hottest rush of blood in her veins, a song that her mother had never taught her. She dreamt of legs tangling and the spill of hair across a pillow, and words, sweet words that left her drunk and breathless. She allowed herself, in the dream, to believe her lover’s promises; she allowed herself to believe she was her lover’s first love, and not second, always, to the call of a sea that would never love anyone back.

She did not dream of the lacquered chest.

The lover rose from between the woman’s spread thighs, quite pleased of the effect she had wrought, and as the woman reached to pull her lover closer and taste herself on her lover’s tongue, her lover smiled with slitted yellow eyes, round eyes, devil’s eyes, round as a fly’s. Her teeth were too many, and she smiled, too wide, and the woman woke with a scream dying in her throat. Through her window, the first pale snatches of dawn made shadows shrink and twist as if in pain, but London had no dawn, and the woman has never seen one.

She woke, again, in her squalid, stuffy rooms. She clutched a horsehead amulet to her chest, so tightly it left bloodless grooves in her palms.

…

_Captain’s log, Ma[smudged]_

First officer sick. We moored in a harbour lit wholly and only by candles. Their light flickered, a great and many shining needles, winking, laughing. So much laughter for such a small island, such warmth, the warmest of welcomes. Priests and chapel v. friendly, took 1st officer into seclusion. We prayed at the well, for her health and our own.

That night, when the cracking toll of bells told us that it was nighttime, we feasted. We drank mushroom wine and ate real meat, cooked and raw, and in the frosted nothingness of the North we saw steam lifting from the victuals, and the priests laughed; we laughed with them. First officer was brought to the feast, looking fresher, looking well again. A smiling priest took her by the hand and plunged a steak knife into the hollow beneath her solar plexus. She screamed, so he cut off her lips, and in the cold chapel steam lifted from the fresh meat. It looked just good enough to eat raw.

There was no wind. We ate until we hungered no more, and drank until we thirsted no more, and as we unmoored the priests’ laughter filled our bellies as warmly as any food.

I promoted gunny to first officer. A fine one she shall make.

…

Dear A___,

I write to you in the hopes that we may yet meet in this life. It has to be this one, of course. None of that formerly-dead nonsense. After years at sea, I mistrust London’s propensity for returning the untimely dead to their previous state of being, you understand. Is it not a frightful idea, that we may live once we have died? But what would come of those badly maimed, the headless, the eaten, and so on. One does wonder.

In any case: this must seem like a strange madwoman’s rambling, but I assure you it is not. I am your aunt, your mother’s sister, although I have no certainty either way that she has mentioned my existence to you. We did not see eye to eye. Is it not silly, how obsessed English is with eyes? She had her feet firmly on the ground; I yearned to see the endless wide horizon and turn it upside down. See it. There is it again. See, see, see. What of other senses? Are we deaf, insensate? More variety! I had news of your mother’s — my sister’s — passing, belated, unfortunately; the pneumatic post is far from reliable. You understand. We were twins, but I must confess I did not feel her passing as it is said a twin might.

My ship was moored in S___’s Rocks when she died. It is moored here now, and so memory comes to me unbidden, and so I am writing to you. I hope this letter finds you in good health. I wish I could have seen you as a child, my dear, in frilly whimsical dresses. Did you eat flowers? Your mother did and I, too. Perhaps you have not seen a flower, growing up in this lightless place.

You do not trust mirrors, do you? No? No, good. Do not cross a room when a rat has crossed it prior; always have a cat at hand.

Good health and fortune.  
Your Aunt, Salomea

…

_Captain’s log, captain’s log, captain’s captains logcaptainslog captainslogcaptainslogcapt_

The cat has gone missing. It is not being missed, as such, I can tell, for one less passenger is one less mouth to feed. The crew only seem disappointed that the creature vanished and not simply dropped insensante: it was a well-kept cat. Not fat, but not stringy, either. The wind picked up. It deafens me to mutinous murmurs among the men and women, but I see nasty glints in their eyes. Yellow, yellow eyes. The wind picked up. Port Pennington should draw very near very soon. I know what happens there. I know what I must do to silence the wind, the laughter, the scratching in the walls. I shall eat once more at the red bounty of dreaming alone alone now all all alone. We cannot dream. I cannot dream, for the black wind wakes me. I walk the deck and madness takes hold as the wind howls, and the wood falls away from beneath my feet: I plunge into the depths of the sea just as the priest plunged the knife into my chest, cracking my solar plexus so as to easily scoop up the hotly steaming viscera and innards, for sustenance, for joy, for the trembling viscous red and the shrill laughter of man and beast starved for release, and all my darling crew cracked my ribs outwards to take shelter in their cage. But it was not I whose release was granted, a joyous mad release and a shivering, gasping climax, it was not I IT WAS NOT I i have only the black wind and the black wind and the black wind for company the rats all gone gone from the walls and gone from my belly the shark long gone long eaten its beady little eyes o! o the light the light the joy the light the black wind the wi

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

nd. All things are well. I am alone, alone now. All, all alone.

…

The lover was weary, after months of absence; it was uncertain winds that brought her, finally, back onto the comfortingly familiar waters near London. She disembarked, she and her crew, and as the crew began to unload crate after crate the lover embraced the woman, who was waiting for her, a palpable yearning itching at the tips of her fingers. They embraced as they always embraced. Around them, crates of brandy were having their labels and customs stamps scratched off. No Admiralty officer was in sight, and men and women of the crew whistled, for they knew now that Khaganian brandy could fetch a steep price with no taxes to dwarf it.

A dreadful undying awareness of her aunt’s lacquered chest rested heavily on the woman’s shoulders, the knowledge of her aunt’s passing a burden that lay thickly in her throat, choking, unwanted. She felt as if it might lighten her mind to simply dislodge it, with fingers or nails, but the thought was unseemly. She wished no stranger or friend to find her with her fingers stuck gracelessly down her throat, vomiting a dead woman’s poisonous secrets.

She embraced her lover and thought, instead, of the pleasant weeks certain to follow. Her squalid, stuffy rooms seemed not as horrid, or suffocating, when she imagined the pale sprawl of her lover’s limbs across starched sheets.

‘Did you hear that, Amelia?’ the lover asked. Her expression was intent, and eyes fixed on a point the woman could not name. Somewhere out on the water, certainly, but when she followed her lover’s gaze she saw naught.

She did not hear a single thing out of the ordinary, and said so.

The lover turned towards her. Her eyes, in the lightless gloom, seemed like twin beads carved from obsidian. She said, ‘I could swear I heard the wind, coming in from the sea.’

…

_Captain’s log, _____ __th_

Shimmering waves lapped gently at the hull. Good sailing weather. A good omen, certainly. We all watched land shrink in the distance, until it was but a fleck on the horizon. I felt the cat brush against my legs, and smiled.

A fresh new wind picked up as we rounded the last outgrowths of the Kingeater’s voracious domain.

A good wind. A good omen. Before us the wide eastern horizon unfurled in all its glorious vibrant bloom. The threshold of dreams winked and slithered towards us and we towards it, our bellies full and our spirits high. Far in the east, melting into the smooth oily water, a red red sun began to set.


End file.
